Oregon's State Beverage is Milk!

We're going North to the Future tomorrow from She Flies With Her Own Wings (if you know your state mottoes then you will know where we are going and where we are now). In honor of the fun we will most definitely have, here is a video from when we drove down last October, when we put our full faith in the Swedish powers of a 1968 Volvo (and the omnipotent powers of our God), and were rewarded in full:

Also, Oregon's state dance is the Folk Dance. I'm not quite sure how that one goes.

Curling Cornices.

Taylor and I have been knocking the stuffing out of the mountain this week. It has snowed every day, at least 6 inches a day- and it's light and fluffy snow, like in January!
Here are three different cornices we were jumping (and falling) off of. I am the first picture, and Taylor is in the other two. These cornices weren't that big or anything- the first one was 7 feet and the last one is around 11 feet- but oh it was fun!

Can't Every Weekend Be A Holiday Weekend?

Taylor and I just returned from a trip- him to visit his good friend Ross at the coast, and me to Portland to see my good friend Marie. I had the camera, though, so you will just have to trust me that Taylor (and Moma) had a pretty sweet time.
Marie and I went to a great thrift store, just chock full of goodies. She purchased this gem of a nesting-doll, showing Russian (or shall I say USSR-ian?) leaders through the ages. Can you spot mini Stalin?
Another thrift store we visited apparently decided that separating books based on the author's sex was the way to go. Do I need to mention that the store was run by a conservative Christian group?
We then headed up to Seattle and had what I believe could firmly be asserted as a marvelous time. The Sculpture Park there is really fun, and Marie and I could be heard to shout in glee, "Is that a Richard Sera? Oh my gosh! It's so great!" A wedding party and their photographer thought so as well:
A gathering of slightly blurry Whitworthians were seen at a party Eli threw at his lovely new home:
The childhood game of Jump Off The Swings is still great as an adult, we decided. From top to bottom are Marie and Matt, Jenene, Lars, and Marie and me.
And so, to end this post and this weekend, we have a shot of Marie's legs, flying high, wishing us well:

Steens! Alvord! Moma!

We left the town of Bend for the first time in 5 months yesterday- I guess our first cold winter in three years made us go into hibernation mode. As lifelong Oregonians, we felt the stateriotic (pride in one's home state) duty to go camping and experience nature in it's finest, specifically in the famous Steens Mountains of south-eastern Oregon. That whole area is a favorite of ours, and I was proportionately way too excited for the two day camping excursion- which I blame on not having left a 30-mile radius in so long.
The start of the trip wasn't too auspicious, because we left too early to take Moma on her morning walk, and she barked at us to let us know of her displeasure. Our ears rang:
But she soon wised up to the coolness of our destination, and once we got there, decided to help Taylor fish for rainbow trout:
Her help payed off, because he caught a big, old papa. Meanwhile, I took a lovely nap under an old teepee frame I found (was it built by Native Americans or hippies, we will never know). My pillow wasn't near as bad as Jacob's rock- a nice paperback book by Virginia Woolf. I like to think I soaked up some of her way with words into my dreams (which were bizarre, by the way):
Also, our campsite had been frequented by lovers of iconic '90's bands, as seen by these quaint engravings on the picnic table. The attention to detail in the backwards 'R' is my favorite part:
The next day we headed around the bend, so to speak, to the Alvord Desert, a true freak of nature in nature. Picture, if you will, mountains almost 10,000 feet high on one side and a huge flat desert miles across on the other- so great! You can drive no-handed and blind, and still be safe. If we could only figure out how to make the moolah out there, we would totally buy a big parcel of land and make it our home sweet home- a lack of crowds and a surplus of space equals count us in!
Moma and I had a race. It was a tie:
And then she faced the gusty winds, and tried to figure out just where the heck we were:
All in all, a good mini-excursion. Camping is ten times as much fun with a dog than without. And Moma had been so good on the trip that when we got home, she promptly ran off yipping and yapping after a herd of deer. Sheesh already.

All eyes are on the mountain.

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you... for one day only... Taylor the Wondrously Talented Telemark Skiier!
And... Adalie the Amazingly Awe-Inspiring Barista Extraordinaire!